240 km north of Alice Springs and about 50 km from Central Mt
Stuart, the geographical centre of Australia

The original Barrow Creek morse repeater station opened on 16 August 1872

The explorer John McDouall Stuart
Passed through in naming it Barrow Creek after a member of the South Australian
Parliament. The telegraph repeater station was set up in 1871and the present
building was opened on 16 August 1872 by Charles Todd. It was one of 15 stations
of the morse repeater network that connected Australia the world. In 1932 the
store and hotel were built. It was built just before the gold rush to Tennant
Creek. The pub is open today serving a migration of a different kind. Visitors
are welcome to enter these historic buildings by getting a key from the Barrow
Creek hotel near

In February 1874 Samuel Gason, a mounted
constable, arrived and the police station was opened. 8 days later and 2 men
were killed and one wounded.

Prior to the arrival of the survey and
construction teams the spring at Barrow Creek was a used by the local Aboriginal People
both for drinking water and to hunt animals attracted to it. The Aboriginal People had
been friendly and some even worked for the repeater station. Then the spring was
fenced off for the sole use of the sheep and cattle of the station. In
February 1874 members of the Kaiditj Tribe attacked the station, and the
station master and a lineman were killed and another wounded. James Stapleton,
the stationmaster, had arrived earlier in the month from the Katherine telegraph
station on his way to Adelaide. On his arrival he found the stationmaster was
sick and replaced him, sending the sick man to Adelaide.

A police hunt was mounted to find the attackers,
but although many Aboriginal People were killed, no arrests were made.

Source 1

In the area of
barrow Creek an exhumed surface that is gneissic and bouldery is exposed
from the flat-lying sediments, from the
Neoproterozoic of the Forster Range (e.g., Haines et al.,
1991). The surface of the plateau may be be part of a Cretaceous or
sub-Cretaceous, the author1 suggesting it was probably the
former.